


pleasure to meet you

by glycerineclown



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Oral Sex, Touch-Starved, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 23:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13581303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glycerineclown/pseuds/glycerineclown
Summary: Paige is on a first-name basis with just about every hotel bartender in Manhattan. She’s tasted every dessert on the menu at the St. Regis, and dirtied the sheets of the Royal Suite at the Ritz-Carlton.She’s seenThe Book of Mormoneleven times since it opened, with eleven different men. It hasn’t gotten old yet.Whenever they ask if she’s seen it, she always says no.It makes them feel special to show her things.--Or, the AU where Karen's a high-class escort, and Frank is desperately lonely and has been given a lot of money.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Every great fandom has a good old-fashioned prostitution AU, and I'm going to damn well write one for Kastle.
> 
> I was so mad at myself when I had this idea, given how horrible the comics were to Karen, but then I figured out how to do it right and couldn't help myself, so I hope you'll trust me and jump in. 
> 
> The timeline for this fic is starting sometime after the end of The Punisher S1, but Frank and Karen have never met. I'm going to just ignore the logistics of how Frank would have gotten anywhere without her, and get to the good stuff.
> 
> For Selina, again. Thank you for the cheerleading.

 

The request had been submitted while Karen was sleeping.

Pete Castiglione, a combat veteran, thirty-seven years old. In the photo, he has a full beard, his hair kind of wavy, almost black. His eyes dark and soft, his nose broad and probably broken a few times.

He’s filled out every part of the questionnaire, which Karen appreciates. It paints a sad picture, though—his wife is dead, and he hasn’t had sex in almost three years. He wants intimacy but doesn’t think he can have real attachments.

He likes cuddling, and thinks that might be all he’s interested in from her, but might be open to more if that feels right. If they do go forward, he likes giving and receiving oral sex, and would rather she took charge in bed, tell him what to do. No known venereal diseases, but he can get tested before any sexual contact.

He has a lot of scars on his body that he hopes aren’t a problem, mainly bullet and stab wounds.

At that point, she looks at his face again, and sits back from her laptop.

She’s not going to bother sending this one to Jessica for a background check. She knows exactly who he is.

She’d followed the case very carefully—every known member of the Dogs of Hell, the cartels, and the Kitchen Irish had been blacklisted from every escort agency in the city, on principle. She’d asked to look at the list, years before, back when she didn’t get to pick and choose whose dick she sucked for money.

Castiglione. It’s not even a good fake name.

Hers is Paige, though. She really doesn’t have room to talk.

 

On Thursday, Karen walks into a coffee shop a few blocks from her studio, and goes to sit at her usual table. She’ll wait until after he arrives to order her latte.

She’s fifteen minutes early. She always likes to get there first, but sometimes the nervous ones  are even earlier than her. Especially the younger ones—the ones who earned their money early, tech geeks usually—they’re careful, jumpy like gazelles. Inexperienced.

Pete Castiglione won’t be jumpy, she doesn’t think.

She wonders what Foggy would think of this, the fact that she knows in her bones that he’s Frank Castle. What legal ramifications that could have for her, as if she’s not already straddling the law herself. Wealthy men pay her a premium for the peace of mind that she’s not trafficked or fifteen, that she’s a business owner and has been doing this on and off for just over a decade.

After finishing college with no debt and no family to impress, being an accountant for the rest of her life sounded like the worst idea she’d ever had, like a long, slow nine-to-five drag to being middle-aged. She kept on with an agency for a while, before deciding she wanted to work independently, make all the choices herself, and take home all the profit, after expenses.

Her clients respond well to her because she knows how to read them, when to say what they want to hear, and when to say what they need to hear.

She was always good at it. They’re hot putty in her hands.

If he ends up wanting to see her regularly, Frank Castle would be a _project_.

Two minutes to the hour—punctual, she likes that—a man in a black hoodie walks in, and scans the room. Karen smiles, and he starts toward her.

He would probably bolt if she hinted that she knew, especially in public. She won’t say anything, not yet.

She stands to shake his hand. “Pete?”

He nods as he slides his hand into hers. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a while, and sad, somewhere in his face. “Thank you for meeting with me, ma’am.”

Polite, though. Karen smiles. “Are you a coffee drinker, Pete?”

“I am,” he says, and stands aside to let her pass him. She squeezes the inside of his elbow as she goes, and walks backward toward the line by the register, watches him look away from her, hesitating.

He’s so fucking bashful. She’ll need to break him of that.

He joins her at the back of the line after a moment. There’s only a couple of people ahead of them.

“You strike me as someone who takes their coffee black,” Karen says, as they shuffle forward.

Frank chuckles. “What gave me away?”

She looks him up and down. “It’s your color, isn’t it?”

“Got me there,” he says. “Is it okay if I pay for yours? What would you like?”

Karen eyes him. “Hazelnut latte, please.”

“Okay.”

He pays cash, and drops the change in the tip jar.

 

There’s a two-hour block in her Sunday afternoon reserved for ‘Pete.’ She takes Mondays and Tuesdays off, so this will be a nice capper to her work week.

His answers in the style section of Karen’s questionnaire were pretty boring, which makes it easy—he wants her to wear comfortable, casual clothes, whatever she would wear on a weekend, doesn’t care about fancy underwear.

He’s coming over to snuggle with her, so that means leggings and a sweater. Soft makeup, and she’ll give her hair a break from the curling iron.

Karen rents a separate apartment for her work. It’s a nice studio, nearly twice the square footage of the one she lives in, with a queen-sized bed and a very sturdy couch in the main room. It has a pretty spacious bathroom for Manhattan, and her own washer and dryer. A smallish kitchen with a fridge full of restaurant leftovers. A flat screen mounted on the wall, which really only gets used when clients want to spend the night.

Jessica calls on Saturday before her first client of the day, while she’s tugging fresh sheets across the mattress. Karen sighs and picks it up.

“You know we share a calendar,” Jessica starts, no hello.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, so I didn’t vet this new guy.”

“I did,” Karen says. “I know him.”

“Who is he?”

Jessica would figure it out anyway, it’s what she’s paid for. “He’s Frank Castle with a beard and fake ID. He’s the Punisher.”

“Fucking shit,” Jessica says, and scoffs. “God damn you, Karen.”

“He wants this really bad, Jess,” Karen says. “He was really sweet when I met with him.”

She can practically hear Jessica rolling her eyes.

“You _met with him_ already? God, you’re delusional. You hired me for your goddamn security, and I vote _no_ on this lunatic, Karen. You knew I would.”

Karen sits down on the bed and heaves a sigh. “Think about it, though. His family’s dead, and he can’t just—he _needs_ this. If he wanted to hurt me, he’d gun me down in the street.”

Jessica groans, and after a long pause, she asks, “What exactly is he paying for?”

 

Frank rings the bell from the front door of Karen’s building right on time on Sunday. Jessica had helped her set up cameras when she moved into this space, so Karen can see him pretty clearly from the screen that’s installed by the door. He’s wearing a hat, and a jacket over the hoodie, this time.

She buzzes him in, and after a bit, she flips the screen to show the hallway outside her door, and waits for him to come out of the elevator.

He’s scratching the back of his neck when she opens the door.

“Hi,” Karen says. “Come in.”

“Thank you,” he says, with a nod.

“Can I take your jacket?” Karen says. “Why don’t you get out of those boots, too, huh?”

“Okay.” He shrugs out of his jacket and hands it to her, looking around the room.

Karen turns and hangs it on the coat rack by the door, and then faces him again, watches him lean down to unzip his boots.

“I bet you have questions,” she says, when he’s upright again. “Come, sit.”

She leads him to the couch, and they sit. Frank looks down at his lap, and then takes off his hat quickly, like he’d meant to do it before, like he’s embarrassed.

She doesn’t have to wait very long. He puts his hat down on her ottoman and sighs. “I guess, um. What’s your parameters around cuddling?”

“Cuddling means the clothes stay on, and the hands stay off everything that would be covered by a bikini. Or a Speedo.”

He nods. “That sounds like cuddling.”

She smiles. “Good.”

“Kissing’s extra,” he says, like a statement.

Karen nods. “Yes. We can talk if you want, or we can be quiet, or listen to music. If you fall asleep, I’ll wake you up, and I’ll give you a ten-minute warning before the end of the session.”

“Do I pay you now?” he asks, and reaches into his back pocket, pulls out his wallet. “Eight hundred for two hours, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Okay.” He hands her nine crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Tipping isn’t necessary, I promise,” Karen says, and hands one back. “Thank you, though. Do you have any other questions?”

“Not right now.”

“Okay, c’mon,” Karen says, and looks at the clock, reaches for his hand. “It’s four after. Meter’s running, starting now.”

His palm is warm, and rough with calluses when he slides it into hers. Frank stands when she does, and walks with her to the side of the bed.

“I usually like to start cuddling with a hug,” Karen says, looking down at their hands, and back up at him. “If you want to see me again, that can be the first thing we do when you come in the door.”

“All right,” he says, and rubs his thumb over her knuckles.

She brings it in, traces her fingers up from his hand, and wraps her arms around his shoulders. Karen waits for him to embrace her before she squeezes, rests her head against his shoulder.

They’re the same height, which makes this part easy.

Karen pulls back just enough to smile at him, and then turns, and climbs onto the bed. It’s a tall bed, just the right height to bend her over, and she rearranges the pillows a little, and sits up against the headboard.

“Want to put your head in my lap?” she asks. “Or we can spoon, or—I mean, there are a lot of options.”

Frank puts a knee up on the bed, and crawls toward her, lays down on his side. He presses the side of his face into her thighs, shifts around a little to get comfortable.

Karen smiles down at him, sliding her hand up his shoulder, over firm muscle. “Can I play with your hair?”

“Yes, please,” he says, immediately.

She sinks her fingers in, makes circles against his scalp, watches his eyes close. “Tell me about your day.”

He hums a little into her thigh. “It’s Sunday. I was reading before I came over.”

“What were you reading?”

“ _Flowers For Algernon_. I’m almost done with it.”

Karen smiles. She’s read it before. “What’s it about?” she asks anyway, combing Frank’s hair behind his ear with her fingers.

Frank wraps his hand over the top of her thigh, in front of his face. “It’s written like diary entries, from this disabled guy who has some experimental surgery, y’know, that’s supposed to make him smart, but instead, now that he’s a genius, he just has to rethink his entire life and understand all the ways people fucked him over in the past.”

“Sounds like a real downer.”

He laughs, and rubs his thumb into her thigh. “Yeah, you got that right. My buddy Curtis is a counselor for veterans, an’ he’s got me working on a reading list, so.”

“What’s next on the list?”

“Somethin’ by Ken Follett, I think.”

“I hope it’s _Pillars of the Earth_ ,” Karen says.

Frank smiles. “That’s it.” He turns onto his back to look up at her, and folds his hands over his stomach. “What did you do today?”

“I went to my yoga class this morning, and then I got a smoothie, and did some laundry,” she says, and rubs her hand over his chest, smiles down at him. “And now you’re here.”

He looks down at her hand, and lifts one of his own, tangles their fingers together. “That sounds nice.”

“It _was_ nice,” she says, and cups her other hand over his forehead, drags it back over his hair.

“That feels good,” Frank says, softly, and turns his face into her hand when she brings it back to his hairline.

Her fingertips find two distinct ridges on his skin, maybe two inches long and just above his right ear. It’s hidden by his hair, now, she can’t see it, but she hazards a guess that it’s a bullet graze.

Karen smiles. “Touch is important. I think we can get a little lost when we’re by ourselves too much.”

With a small nod, Frank squeezes her hand and then releases it, trails his fingers down to her elbow. He sighs, and says, “Yeah, I feel that.” His breath is a little wobbly, and he clears his throat.

“They say touch can reduce anxiety and depression, lower your heart rate,” she says, resuming the circles against his scalp. “I don’t think many people realize that it’s like food. You need to have it every day.”

Frank closes his eyes, nods again. Karen sighs, and lifts her other hand from his chest, wraps it around the side of his neck. He swallows hard and breathes out, and Karen drags her thumb across his cheek, through his beard.

“You’re not wrong to need this,” she says, barely above a whisper. “It’s good, you’re taking care of yourself.”

He presses his lips together then, and looks up at her, his eyes wide open, shining. Sympathy always made her cry, too.

Karen smiles down at him and nods. “You’re gonna be okay.”

He turns his head, and presses his face into her sweater, and a sob quakes out of him.

She holds onto him tight until it passes.

 

They don’t always come to her studio. That’s usually pretty low-key.

What a lot of the men who contact her lack in looks, they more than make up for in expensive taste.

Paige is on a first-name basis with just about every hotel bartender in Manhattan. She’s tasted every dessert on the menu at the St. Regis, and dirtied the sheets of the Royal Suite at the Ritz-Carlton.

She’s seen _The Book of Mormon_ eleven times since it opened, with eleven different men. It hasn’t gotten old yet.

Whenever they ask if she’s seen it, she always says no.

It makes them feel special to show her things.

She’s been taken on vacations to beautiful places all over the world, places she’d never _dreamed_ she’d see as a kid. She’s held hands at the Sistine Chapel, and given a blowjob in the bathrooms of the Louvre. She’s had sex with high-powered CEOs, with neural surgeons, with trust-fund boys. She’s gone backstage to meet Stevie Nicks with a pro wrestler from Mexico City, who was grinning the entire time.

Most of them just want someone to talk to. The sex is a small fraction of what she gets paid for, as far as her time goes—the rest is companionship, it’s intimacy.

They’re insecure and unhappy, but they treat her like a princess, and they pay for shit.

They open up to her because she’s completely separate from their real lives, or at least what they perceive their real lives to be.

A lot of the local dates are one-offs—guys who want to lose their virginity, or are in town for a business trip and just want their first blowjob in five years. It’s not as much weird, kinky stuff as people always seem to think, and they’re usually too old to be able to come more than twice in a session.

Karen draws a hard line at working with government officials and clergy. She won’t pretend to be younger than she is, and she doesn’t let men restrain her with anything but their hands.

She only does anal with three days’ advance notice, and charges double for it because she can.

Some of her clients are men that stayed in touch with her after she left her last agency. Thom’s divorced, co-parenting three kids, and is always up to his eyeballs in work. No time for a relationship, and relieved that she’s more than ten years older than his daughter. He calls her once a year or so—he had some vacation days to use up last fall, and took her to Boston for a long weekend. They watched pay-per-view movies and went to a Red Sox game, and stuffed themselves with Italian food.

She took home nearly forty thousand dollars.

And then there’s Troy—he can’t afford to see her as often as he’d like. He’s almost thirty, grew up in the Bronx. He has pretty severe cerebral palsy, and has a hard time using his hands, but his mouth works very well, and so does his cock. He has a killer sense of humor and always greets her with a kiss.

Every couple of months, for three grand, she lets Jeremy, who spends four hours a day at the gym and is jacked as fuck, bounce her on his dick and toss her around the bed like a ragdoll. He always makes her come before he leaves in the morning, bright and early, to head back to—you guessed it, the fucking gym.

Foggy’s a big-time lawyer at a firm on the Upper East Side, and he just wanted to learn how to eat pussy. He got _very_ good at it. He’s what Karen considers a success—he doesn’t need her anymore.

Marci’s a lucky girl.

She knows some of them very, very well. She knows their darkest secrets. It’s entirely one-sided in that way, though. She puts on a mask for them, and none of them are stupid enough to think she doesn’t, but they don’t speak of it. And that’s fine—it keeps the illusion.

Paige is the yes girl, as long as they play by her rules. She’s a fantasy, a smile, a teacher they had a crush on in high school but didn’t really want to get to know.

Karen left her hometown long ago, and her job can be isolating. She doesn’t have many friends. Yoga class is good, but she has a hard time connecting with the other girls—it’s the instructor, Cheryl, who she’s actually gone out for drinks with. They both think of their jobs as healing, but Cheryl’s in the dark about what Karen does for a living.

Jessica’s not exactly a friend. Karen gets along much better with Trish, who’s sharp and gregarious and always has good questions about how business is going, and makes sure that Karen’s taking care of herself. She always wants Karen to come on Trish Talk and dish about the wealthy men of New York, too, but Karen always laughs the idea off.

She likes to keep her circle smaller than that.

As sex workers go, Karen’s been very lucky, and she knows that. She’s never had a pimp in the traditional sense, never been a streetwalker, never been coerced into drug use. Never been looked at twice by the police.

It was really easy to get her degree and work for an agency on the side. Probably way too easy.

It’s always been a lot of personal upkeep, a lot of mani-pedis and more shaving and waxing than she’d like, but she’s never been expected to show up dressed like an extra in a music video. Most of the men who pay for her services would be scared off by that anyway.

Most of them—they want a fantasy, sure, but she has to be approachable, too.

That part she was always very good at.

 

Frank’s at her door again, the next week, at the same time, with the same amount of cash.

He’s brought sweatpants with him, and he changes in the bathroom after sinking into her long hug. When he comes back, Frank stretches out in the center of the bed, and puts an arm out for her to use as a pillow.

He’s getting the hang of this.

Karen molds herself against his side, tucks her knee between his, and feels his arm curl around her shoulders. She traces her fingers over the buttons on his Henley, and breathes him in.

He smells good.

“Can I ask you a question?” Frank asks, softly.

“Mm-hmm.”

“You don’t live here, do you?”

Karen shakes her head against his collarbone. “No.”

“How do you protect yourself?”

“I have people who know my schedule, that I check in with throughout the day,” Karen says. “And I carry a gun when I go out by myself, but these days it’s more about how much money I have on me after jobs.”

She’s never _told_ a client about the gun before—the element of surprise is half the weapon. She’d be no match for the Punisher, though.

“You ever use it, the gun?” he asks.

“Once,” Karen says. “It was a long time ago. I control who my clients are, now. Run extensive background checks, say no when I should. They know I have all their information, they don’t fuck it up.”

Frank nods. He doesn’t say anything for most of a minute.

“Do you know who I am?” he asks, finally.

“Yes, I do.”

“You haven’t called me Pete since we met for coffee.”

She snorts. “Oh, I knew as soon as you sent in your application.”

“You did?” He turns his head to look down at her.

Karen smiles, and pulls up on one elbow, lets her eyes wander over his face. “You look good with your hair long and no shiners. It’s softer. Like you could be—I don’t know, somebody’s mysteriously handsome next-door neighbor.”

He smirks a little. “You think so?”

“Scout’s honor. Especially in those sweatpants.”

Frank scoots up the bed at that, sits against the headboard, and Karen shifts to her knees.

He sticks his hand out. “I’m Frank. Frank Castle.”

She chuckles, and shakes it. “Karen Page, without the I. Pleasure to meet you.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely don't own The Pillars of the Earth, which I'm quoting directly from here, but I do highly recommend it if you want a great book about complicated and flawed religious politics, Gothic architecture, and great big assholes. And family drama. And more sex than I was expecting.

 

Karen goes home, folds over the rug in front of her TV, and opens the safe under her floorboards. She puts in the cash from Frank, and closes it again.

She prefers to get paid by check, but it’s fine.

They’re both hiding from the law, in their own ways.

Karen has just under four hundred thousand dollars in an offshore account. She keeps the studio looking good, with classic, strong wood furniture, but otherwise lives pretty far below her means. She doesn’t really need a lot—she has a very nice wardrobe, and more fancy underwear than anyone has a use for, but those are work expenses, technically.

Jessica doesn’t mind being paid in cash, but she doesn’t get enough from Karen to have to worry too much about laundering it. Alias Investigations is a legitimate business, and in the event of an audit, Jessica would have bigger problems.

When she’s not on trips, Karen typically has a ten- to twelve-hour work week. It leaves a lot of free time. She’s dabbled in writing, and with her lifestyle, there’s no shortage of inspiration. Beyond letting it sit on her hard drive, though, she’s too paranoid to do much with it.

She donates to the local public schools annually, and slips hundred-dollar bills into the bags of sleeping homeless people.

Planned Parenthood receives a hefty and anonymous sum from her every year as well, and god knows she’s sent countless men there for STD testing. She won’t give unprotected blowjobs without a clean bill of health, and every two weeks, Karen drops by herself.

After getting up close and personal with a lot of ballsacks, she’s also suggested to a few of her clients that they should go back and get a cancer screening.

More than one has told her that she saved their life.

 

On the third Sunday that Frank comes to see her, he’s carrying a thick paperback under one arm—it’s _The Pillars of the Earth_.

“I, uh, I felt bad starting it without you,” Frank says, and hands her the book, so he can bend down and take off his boots. 

“I guess I could read you some, if you want,” Karen says, and flips through to the end—there’s just under a thousand pages. “But I must warn you, I’m a lot more expensive than an audiobook.”

Frank grins, looks up at her as he takes off his second boot. “Better company, though. A few pages is fine.”

After he straightens up, she puts the book down on the bed, and pulls him in for a hug.

His fingers curl in her hair when he embraces her.

He changes into his sweatpants, and they arrange themselves on the bed after that, Karen eventually settling for something kind of opposite of their last position—Karen on her back this time, Frank curled around her, her legs tucked over his bent ones.

She props the heavy book open on her chest, and flips past the preface to the prologue. “ _The Pillars of the Earth_ , by Ken Follett. Prologue, 1123.”

“Seriously? Jesus.”

Karen snorts. “I can pretend it’s based in the 1970s if that’ll make you feel better. I’m sure a bunch of this stuff happened at Woodstock.”

“No,” Frank says, and rubs his hand over her ribcage. “I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet.”

“Okay,” she says, and curls the front cover around the spine so she can hold it with one hand, and lets the other slide into Frank’s hair.

She takes a deep breath, and begins.

_“The small boys came early to the hanging. It was still dark when the first three or four of them sidled out of the hovels, quiet as cats in their felt boots. A thin layer of fresh snow covered the little town like a new coat of paint, and theirs were the first footprints to blemish its perfect surface. They picked their way through the huddled wooden huts, and along the streets of frozen mud, to the silent marketplace, where the gallows stood waiting...”_

 

She’d read it after Kevin did. After he was gone.

She read a lot of the books that were in his room, after. He had mainly medieval fiction and fantasy paperbacks, in varying levels of high- and low-brow, and mostly secondhand. He never wrote notes in the margins or anything, but it felt like she could visit with him, disappear with him into someone else’s life, when she read the books he had read.

Their parents had found some magazines under his mattress—old-school for porno, but it was 2001. Dial-up on the family desktop was too expensive and nowhere near good enough yet.

They were going to send him away.

He’d come out to her the year before, and Karen was pretty sure that she was the only one who knew, until then.

Their parents swore her to secrecy. They wouldn’t have the memory of their beloved son tarnished by rumors and godlessness, as if they didn’t believe the truth themselves.

When she spoke at the wake, Karen didn’t think they would actually write her out of the will and block the access to her college fund. She was their only living child. That’s not to say she blames them for her harlotting, but—her life would be a lot different.

She’ll never regret telling the truth, though. They got divorced, eventually, and she’d thought about reaching out, but she couldn’t have been honest anyway, about anything in her life.

It wouldn’t bring her any joy to see their faces.

 

Frank doesn’t have the book with him the next week, but he’s brought her coffee order and his own in a carrier, with a chocolate chip cookie.

“You spoil me, Frank,” she says, and takes a sip while he’s taking off his boots.

They sit on the couch and break pieces off the cookie, and Karen perches herself with her knees bent over one of Frank’s strong thighs.

She rests her head on his shoulder and sighs. “Did you have a good week?”

“It was okay,” Frank says, and lifts a hand to rest on Karen’s knees, warm and solid, his arm over her thighs. “One of my neighbors just got a puppy, and he’s so damn cute, with these giant paws, I can’t be mad about the noise.”

Karen smiles, and takes another sip of her latte. “You want a dog?”

He shrugs. “I don’t have a yard or anything.”

“Doesn’t stop half of New York.”

“Yeah, you got that right,” Frank says, rubbing his thumb over her knee. “What about you? No problems with clients, nobody I should beat up?”

Karen laughs. “No, Frank, definitely not.”

Besides Jessica and Trish, no one’s asked her that in a long time.

Karen drains the last of her latte, sets her cup aside, and wraps her arms around Frank’s bicep. His hand feels so good on her, like a weighted blanket, and she doesn’t want to get up, even though her back is starting to hurt from the position.

They move to the bed after a while, and Karen reclines against the pillows, and pulls him in to lay between her legs. He’s reluctant to put all his weight on her at first, but eventually Frank presses his face into her chest, and closes his eyes.

If she hadn’t just drank a latte, she could have fallen asleep like that, with her arms around Frank’s shoulders, feeling him breathe.

 

On Friday night, she has an expensive dinner and a bottle of red with an ad exec named Stephen, who wants to fuck her from behind. He’s been reading a lot of news articles about Bitcoin lately, and it doesn’t really interest her, but she listens and asks questions because that’s her job.

He’s not a very good conversationalist, but he doesn’t put his foot in his mouth too badly, doesn’t order her food for her or start talking loudly about what he’d like to do to her.

That’s happened before.

They go back to his hotel after, and he slides his arm around her as they walk out of the cab and into the lobby.

In the elevator, he backs her up against the handrail, and she reels him in, directs his mouth to her neck. The door opens before his floor, though, and Stephen pulls away from her as a family with a toddler get into the elevator.

They spill out on the seventeenth floor, and Stephen pulls his keycard from his wallet, and they go inside.

It’s a nice room, with a king-sized bed. Karen walks to the window, and looks out over Central Park. It’s lit up by streetlamps, and there’s a tandem bicycle going down a path, covered in string lights and blinking different colors.

She can hear him, taking off his sport coat. Karen looks over her shoulder as he drapes it over the chair at the desk.

He comes up, and she leans into him as his arms wrap around her from behind.

“This is a great dress,” he says. “Would look even better on the floor.”

Paige laughs and turns, reaches up to unbutton his shirt.

He fucks her standing up against the desk, with the curtains open and his pants around his knees. Stephen reaches his hand around to get at her clit, but it’s no use.

She doesn’t want to teach him how to please her, so she cries out when he’s close enough, takes a shower with him, and sees herself out when it’s time.

 

Karen presses her face into Frank’s furry neck when they hug in her doorway the next time. She can feel his pulse against her forehead, a slow pound.

He doesn’t pull away, and she just holds on.

She feels one of his hands on the back of her head after a bit, his fingers rubbing into her scalp.

“Hey,” Frank says softly, and chuckles. “Miss me?”

She doesn’t tell him that this might be the best part of her week.

They lay down facing each other on the bed. Frank’s sweatshirt is partway unzipped, he’s just wearing a tank top underneath. There are some scars visible on his shoulder—one looks like it’s definitely a bullet hole, but the other is bigger, messier.

Karen traces her fingertips over them, and glances up to gauge his reaction. “How old are these?” she asks.

Frank looks down at her fingers, on the messy one. “That was an arrow, believe it or not.”

Karen makes a face. “Yikes.”

“Yeah, it didn’t tickle,” Frank says, and chuckles. “‘Bout five months ago now, I guess. The other, I got shot, year before that.”

Karen nods, and reaches for the ankle of her yoga pants, and tugs it up around her knee.

“Check that out,” she says, and Frank wraps his hand around her ankle when Karen lifts her leg up to show him a rather tame, pale scar. “I fell out of a tree at bible camp.”

Frank laughs at her, but that was her intention. She’d only had to get four stitches. It’s the most significant physical mark she has. 

“Bet you were the tallest girl at bible camp,” he says, and wraps her bent leg around his hip.

Karen nods, and scoots closer. “I was on the high school basketball team, too.”

He grins. “Wish I coulda seen that.”

“You wanna go down to the park, play some HORSE?”

“Oh, boy,” Frank says, and shakes his head. “You’d beat my ass for sure, darlin’.”

Karen bites her lip and nods.

She could close the distance, pull him in for a kiss, but that’s his decision to make, not hers.

 

If they have an official standing appointment on Sundays, it’s only there in Karen’s head. Frank just keeps scheduling his next two hours with her at the end of the sessions, and she keeps leaving it free for him.

If she’s assumed wrong, she can afford to not work. She’s taken whole months off, before, when she doesn’t have any regulars.

Someone wanted to be penciled in for four o’clock on Sunday and take her to dinner after, and she’d said no.

She _is_ seeing Thom in a few weeks, going to Philly for a few days, and getting back very late on Sunday. That’s been on her schedule for months, though.

She thinks of it as Frank’s time, now. She probably likes him too much.

Scratch that—she definitely does.

And he’s the fucking Punisher.

 

The next Sunday, when Karen opens the door, Frank’s wearing his hat again. He has his chin down, she can’t see his face.

He looks up, though, after a moment—and there’s a bruise covering most of his cheekbone. It’s turning green at the edges, probably a few days old already. She pulls him inside and closes the door.

“Frank,” she says, soft, and brings both of her hands up to pull off his hat and frame his face. “What happened?”

“It’s nothing,” he says, shaking his head between her hands. “Really.”

Karen shakes her head right back, and points to the couch. “Go sit on the couch, right now.”

He looks down at his boots. “Don’t you want me to take these off?”

“I’m sorry, was I unclear?” Karen says, with just enough edge to make Frank hop to.

He goes, sits down, rests his elbows on his knees. He’s looking at his hands instead of her.

Karen heaves a sigh as she approaches him. “What am I going to do with you, Frank.”

Frank looks up when she’s standing in front of him, and then her hand is pushing at his shoulder, and he sits back. She watches his mouth fall open as she puts a knee up on the couch, and swings her other leg around to straddle him.

“Oh,” Frank says, airily, like it was involuntary.

She turns Frank’s face with her hands, angles him for the best view of his bruise.

Karen tuts at him, and leans in, presses a soft kiss to his cheekbone, and a firmer one to his temple.

She feels his hands then, on her waist, and then his arms are wrapping around her, holding her close to him. Karen smiles, and slides her fingers into his hair as he turns his face back toward her.

She can feel his warm breath on her skin. She wants to kiss his mouth—and god, this is bad, she likes him way too much.

“Frank,” she says, as she pulls back to look at him, slides her hands down his chest. “Frank, Frank, Frank.”

He raises a hand to her cheek, and his smile twists up when she leans into it.

He’s a _client_. She closes her eyes, but she can still feel him everywhere, she’s getting wet already. She’d fuck him for free, take him apart piece by piece.

Frank sighs.

She opens her eyes again as his fingers tuck around the back of her neck, and then he’s drawing her gently down through the inches between them, until their foreheads touch.

Cuddling with Frank might be the easiest money she’s ever made. And she knows he’s good for it.

She hovers there, above his lips.

She doesn’t want to encourage violent behavior by telling him he looks hot when he’s a little beat up. And they’ve never actually discussed going further. As far as she knows, he hasn’t even been to get tested. She won’t want to stop if she kisses him.

Maybe it’s just the anticipation talking. She’s never seen a client this many times without having already fucked them, without at the very least seeing them without their pants. Professional cuddlers exist, and they’re a fraction of the price.

Karen clears her throat, and pulls back, presses her lips to his forehead.

She pushes off the couch at that, and he watches her go—there’s a look of surprise and confusion on his face, before he can cover it.

Karen climbs onto the bed. “Come get your cuddles, Frank.”

 

“So, has he bench-pressed you yet?” Jessica asks, when Karen drops by Alias Investigations with an envelope full of cash in her bag.

Karen snorts, and sits down in the chair opposite Jessica’s desk. “I wish.”

Jessica just shakes her head, opens a drawer, and pulls out a tumbler. She pours Karen a shot of bourbon, and slides it across the desktop.

“Thanks,” Karen says, and raises it between them.

Jessica raises the bottle in turn, and brings it to her lips. She looks to her laptop after that.

“I was looking through the last few applications today, and I must say, this Vincent Alescio guy is a real winner,” Jessica says. “He’s in pretty deep with the Gnuccis, so I’d advise against that.”

“Yeah, no thanks.”

Jessica scoffs. “You say that like you’re not literally mooning over the Punisher.”

Karen knocks back the last of her bourbon. “Yeah, well.” She sighs, and sits back. “I mean, he’s a _nice_ murderer. He’s been a gentleman.”

“Uh-huh,” Jessica says, and rolls her eyes. “This other one—Darrell Holland? He seems alright, if a little desperate.”

“I thought so too,” Karen says, nodding. “Easy to please, though.”

“I’ll stake him out tonight, then. Got somethin’ for me?”

 

They decide to watch a movie, the next Sunday, and Frank tells Karen to pick. When Karen proposes a few options, he points at _My Best Friend’s Wedding_ and nods. She’d been kidding when she suggested it to him—her other choices were lighthearted, but not outright _romcoms_.

Frank’s crooked grin stays in place through the opening credits.

“What’s the deal, Frank?” she asks, side-eyeing him on the couch even though he’s being cute as hell, with a look on his face like he’s in on a joke.

Frank shakes his head and laughs. “This was, uh, my girl Lisa’s favorite movie. My wife had an old copy on tape, and Lisa wore it out so bad, we had to buy it again on DVD.”

Karen turns to him, waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t.

“You never talk about them,” she says softly.

Frank shrugs, and cocks his head to the side. “Guess there’s not a lot to say anymore. They’re gone, and I’m still here.”

She slides her hand over his. “I’m sorry, Frank.”

He nods. “Thank you.”

She watches him for a bit longer, but he doesn’t seem to want to say anything else. Karen faces back toward the TV, and decides not to ruin it, just snuggles closer until Frank puts his arm around her.

Julia Roberts has a man to steal. Or try to.

 

Karen gives a blowjob in the studio on Thursday night, to a man named Hiroto, who’s in town on business from Seattle. It’s a relief, because she doesn’t have to think too much, she just reads his sealed test results, kneels between his legs in front of the couch, and goes to work.

It’s a lot less complicated than getting fucked.

His cock isn’t huge, which makes it even better—she can take him deep, and he doesn’t thrust into her mouth too much, just threads his fingers into her hair.

She suspects that if Frank ever asked for this, he’d let her control it too. She’d look up at him, losing his goddamn mind but staying so still for her, not wanting to press any advantage while her mouth’s busy.

She gives it nice and sloppy, with her eyes closed, and Hiroto doesn’t talk beyond groans, and she’s wet by the end of it.

She has a two-hour minimum for appointments, and after his head clears, he asks to go down on her. Karen accepts, and helps him find her clit with his tongue and fingers.

She doesn’t have to fake it—he’s good at this, and pays attention.

They cuddle for a while after, and when he asks to see her again the next time he’s in the city, she smiles and pulls up her calendar.

 

On the eighth Sunday that they meet at her studio, Frank’s a little uneasy as he comes in the door.

“Something wrong?” she asks, as his arms wrap around her.

“I screwed up a little bit,” he says, as he pulls away, leans down to take off his boots. “Non-life threatening. Lemme lay down first.”

Once he’s out of his boots, Frank unzips his hoodie, too, and strips out of it—he’s wearing that goddamn tank top again. There are a few more scars visible to her now, that she hasn’t yet seen, and the fucking _muscles_. On full display.

Frank doesn’t bother with sweatpants, just puts a knee up onto the bed and faceplants into the mattress, and tugs a pillow under his head.

Karen watches his ass as she follows him onto the bed, and curls up on her side, facing him. “What is it?”

“Saw a friend on Friday, he and his wife had me over for dinner,” Frank says, and turns over, onto his back. “They thought I looked better.”

“That’s good,” she says, letting her fingers trail down his bare shoulder.

He sighs, and winces. “They kept needling on about it, though, and then Sarah, she—she asked if I was seeing someone.”

“What’d you say?” Karen asks with a smirk, and pulls up on one elbow, to look down at him. “They think you have a girlfriend?”

“I said we were just friends, but I don’t think she believed me.” He smiles back, sheepish, and lifts a hand to twirl a lock of her hair around his finger. “Is that bad?”

Karen shrugs. “Depends. I think it can be fun, personally.”

“What can be fun?”

They’re getting too close for this to _actually_ be just fun, but she can’t make herself stop. “Coming up with a fake history with someone, selling it in front of their nearest and dearest.”

He squints at her. “What?”                                                                                

“Well, obviously they’ll want to meet this mystery girl that you’re _friends_ with,” Karen says. “You’ve been alone for a long time, you’re _Frank Castle_ , they want to make sure she won’t break your heart or worse.”

He brings his other hand up to his face. “Jesus Christ.”

“Plus—” she says, and Frank scoffs, but she barrels on through. “Plus, it’s awkward to have one guest in your home who’s a single man. We’ll bring flowers and a bottle of wine, and they’ll love me.”

With a sigh, Frank looks up at the ceiling and says, “They already invited you to dinner.”

Karen gasps. “Really?”

“I said I wasn’t sure.”

“Aww, Frank.”

“I don’t know, with David—it’s not a good idea,” Frank says, shaking his head. “He was an NSA analyst, he’ll want to look you up. You got a record?”

Karen shrugs her shoulders. “Not for the past ten years or so.”

 

Frank calls a couple of nights later—it’s her weekend, but Karen happily picks it up.

His friends had given him a few nights that were available for dinner, so Karen consults her schedule. One of the dates is while she’ll be in Philadelphia with Thom, but there’s a Saturday night free the weekend before that’ll work for her.

“What do you want to tell them about me?” Karen asks.

“I don’t know. What do you usually say that you do?”

“My go-to is that I’m a waitress at The Lexington,” she says. “I waited tables in high school, and I spend a lot of time in hotels, so I can sell it. People don’t ask a lot of questions about it, either. If I tell them I went to school for accounting and now I’m a fucking accountant, then we have to talk about taxes or the economy, and no one wants to do that.”

He chuckles through the phone. “Yeah, okay. How would I have met you, though? I don’t stay in fancy hotels.”

“Well, where do you go to eat?”

“Hole-in-the-wall diners, usually.”

Karen shrugs, even though he can’t see her. “Maybe I’ve been serving you coffee for a few weeks, and sat down across from you in the booth one day.”

“And why’d you do that?”

Same reason she said yes to working with him. “Because I recognized you, and knew you needed someone.”

“Oh,” Frank says, and pauses. “So it was pity.”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a total crush on you.”

Frank laughs. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Will you just let me have a _little_ fun, please?”

She can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Okay.”

 

That weekend, when Karen opens the door, the first thing Frank does is to look her up and down.

“Wow.”

She realizes, then, that Frank’s never seen her dressed up. It’s not a lot, but she’s put on a skirt and blouse, and curled her hair in the front.

They’d agreed on her standard rate for an evening out—he could get laid tonight, if he wanted to, but he didn’t say anything about that. She leaves the envelope from him on the bed, and locks the door behind them.

Karen slides her hand into the crook of his elbow in the elevator, and Frank smiles. 

“You look beautiful,” he says. “I mean, you always do, but—”

She grins back. “Thank you, Frank.”

She thinks he might be blushing.

They exit the building, and Frank leads her to where he had parked—he drives a truck, which isn’t surprising—and opens the door for her.

He fills her in briefly on his friends, the Liebermans, on the drive out to the suburbs. It’s a harrowing tale that she only gets the outline of, and Karen has a lot of questions, but she focuses on the people for the sake of the evening. David’s a not-dead hacker who helped Frank uncover the conspiracy that murdered his family, and who Frank helped reunite with his wife, Sarah, and their two children.

The daughter, Leo, reads a lot, and has become a real Ms. Fix-It. Her little brother Zach is a smartass, but he’s doing better in school with his dad back at home.

Sarah’s cutting way back on the booze, and working from home, same as her husband.

He speaks of them with such fondness that it makes her kind of jealous.

Frank parallel parks smoothly on a residential street, and then reaches into the back, and pulls out a bottle of wine. “So we don’t look like freeloaders,” he says, and hands it to her.

She looks down at the label. It’s a good choice. “This is a nice bottle,” Karen says.

Frank shrugs. “The guy at the store recommended it.”

She hands it back, and he starts to open his door.

“Hey, wait a second,” she says, and he closes it again, and looks at her. “Kiss me.”

Frank raises his eyebrows, as if to say, _huh?_

“No one brings a friend to a dinner party, and you know it,” Karen says, and smiles. “C’mon. It’s practice. Can’t let the first one have an audience.”

Frank doesn’t say anything, he just leans across the center console, brings a hand up to her face, and tucks some of her hair behind her ear. He pauses to meet her eyes, but only for a second, before his lips are on hers.

His kiss is soft and chapped, not too wet, and he groans a little into her mouth, before he pulls away, brushing his fingers over her cheek.

“Karen, I—” he starts, and then sighs, kind of sadly.

Karen just shakes her head, and kisses him again. “Not now,” she says. “Let’s go in.”

“Yeah, okay.”

 

Frank is loved by these people. It’s clear from the second they walk through the door. He claps David on the back, and kisses Sarah’s cheek, and turns to introduce Karen.

While they’re shaking hands, Leo comes running down the stairs, and wraps her arms around Frank’s waist. The son is more standoffish, and stays on the landing until they leave the foyer, but he manages a smile.

Dinner’s still a half hour out, so after introductions, David pours wine for all the adults from the bottle that Frank brought. They stand around a platter of cheese and crackers for a few minutes, and then Sarah says, “So, how did you two meet?”

Karen and Frank share a look, and he nods to her.

She smiles, and touches Frank’s elbow. “I work at a diner, I’ve been serving this one bottomless coffee for the past few weeks.”

David raises his eyebrows. “Not Graniteville Diner?”

“No, and you can’t try none o’ that payphone shit to get dirt on me, either,” Frank says, and turns back to her.

Karen’s grinning, now—lies always work better when there’s pieces of truth in them. “But he kept coming in, over and over, _every freakin’ week_ —”

Frank scoffs at her. “Oh, come on. I like the service,” he says, like it’s an excuse, and Karen snorts—Frank _loves_ the service.

“Anyway, growing out the crew cut isn’t as good of a disguise as he thinks it is,” Karen says, and lifts a hand up to the back of his neck.

He smiles at her, and slides an arm around her waist.

“What’d I tell you about routines, Frank?” David says, but he’s smiling, too.

“Yeah, well,” Frank says. “I’d be a mess without ‘em. That’s the point of the fake ID, isn’t it?”

David sighs, and begins spreading brie over a cracker. “I guess it is.”

“And no one else recognized him?” Sarah asks.

Karen shakes her head. “No. I’d kept track of the case. And the other women I work with would definitely have said something. Especially considering how well he tips in cash.”

Frank smirks at that, over the rim of his wine glass.

“Listen, Karen, I don’t think I have to impress upon you how important it is that Frank stays hidden,” David says.

“You don’t,” she says. “I’m glad you’re in his corner, though.”

Frank looks around at them, gesturing with his glass. “I’m standing _right here_.”

“Yeah, and we wanna keep it that way,” David says. “You knew this would happen, Frank, I’m more paranoid than you.”

 

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Karen says, as they walk back to Frank’s truck.

“I don’t know, I think David could tell I was hidin’ somethin’,” Frank says, and unlocks the doors, opening the passenger side for Karen.

She stops before getting in, though, and slides her hand up Frank’s forearm. “If I was really a waitress, what would you want to do right now?”

“Truth?”

Karen nods. “Of course, truth.”

A slow grin takes over his face, and he looks away. “Take you back to my apartment, I guess.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You guess?”

“Yeah. Y’know, fuck your brains out. Make _you_ breakfast in the morning for a change.”

“You’d make me breakfast?”

Frank chuckles, and nods.

“You could, y’know,” Karen says. “You’re not going to, though, are you.”

He sighs. “Karen—look, I—”

“No, it’s fine, Frank, really,” she says, and shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Karen turns, and gets into the truck. After a moment, Frank closes the door behind her with a soft clunk.

She’s never been turned down like this before. She’s not good at it. And they still have to drive into Manhattan. God, she’s fucking this up. It’s her job to smooth things over, to never let it get awkward.

Frank opens the driver’s side, and swings himself into the seat. He puts his keys in the ignition, but doesn’t turn it over, he just rests his hands on the wheel, and looks at her.

Karen closes her eyes, and leans her head back.

“Please, just listen to me,” he says. “Please.”

She sighs, and meets his gaze.

“It’s not that I don’t want you, that I wouldn’t,” Frank says. “But I can’t pay you for that. I just—I can’t do it. I’m—I’m not built for it, y’know?”

She doesn’t. This isn’t a problem she’s ever had.

He sits there until the lights in the cab turn off, and then starts the engine.

Frank tunes to an oldies station during the drive back, to fill the silence. It’s pitch dark out, and Karen watches the rain on the windows instead of Frank.

It’s the first time she’s felt truly uncomfortable with him, and that realization alone makes her want to cry. It feels like _loss_.

Most of an hour later, he parks in front of her studio.

Karen makes sure she has everything she brought with her, and then looks up at him. “Don’t forget, I’ve got that trip, so I’ll see you Sunday after next.”

He nods. “Okay. Be careful.”

She smiles tightly. “I always am, Frank.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel absolutely overjoyed and overwhelmed by the response this fic has received, and I want to say thank you. I've had a lot of fun with this fic and I hope you love this last chapter! ♥

 

Karen looks over Frank’s application again the next day, reads through all of his answers.

She hasn’t missed anything.

Nearly three years, he’s gone without. And as far as she can tell, that’s always been an external thing—before his wife was murdered, he was overseas. Beyond a drastic shift in career, it wasn’t a thing he could change. And the precariousness of his life now, whether he’s fighting his own war or not, would make any type of relationship difficult.

He can either lie to someone every day or put them in danger. Or at least, she imagines that he thinks of it that way.

Maybe she’s wrong to push him—what they do is something he can finally control, and that’s his right. Maybe that’s the only reason this works for him.

He can’t control how she feels, though. She can barely do that herself. Wanting Frank is startling, and it makes her feel vulnerable in a way she hasn’t in a long, long time.

It hurts.

Karen hasn’t had sex she wasn’t paid for in nearly twice the time of Frank’s drought. She gets a lot of contact, but not a lot of personal comfort. What she does is never about her, it’s never _for_ her. She’s always presenting, always catering to an audience.

Paige is just an idea. It’s probably fucked her up a lot more than she realizes, spending so much time as someone else. Or maybe instead, they weren’t separate enough—what she did because she wanted it, and what she did for others.

Maybe that’s why she’d introduced herself to Frank so quickly, regardless of the reciprocal nature of it, the honesty he entrusted her with in return.

She hasn’t really _wanted_ anything in a long time. She’s never really had an end goal, no one thing she needs to do with all of her savings, one day, besides live on it.

There was never a good enough reason to stop. She was never going to make the same income again in her life, or have the same amount of free time. And as she did it for longer, and longer, the gap in her resume grew, too.

As did the balance of her bank account.

There was never a shortage of clients. Even when the city gets torn apart—that’s when they need her the most.

 

Karen meets Thom at Penn Station, because it’s the easiest. He sweeps her into a hug like an old friend would, and he’s not wrong—they’ve had a lot of fun together.

He’s got their tickets, and they sit down to wait for boarding.

Thom’s lanky, four or five inches taller and a decade older than Frank, and a real geek. He wears white athletic socks with tennis shoes and jeans unless they’re going to a nice dinner. He’s got a high forehead and graying hair, but he’s not bad looking at all.

He’s always been kind to her, treated her like a person. Never made her feel unsafe. She has no clue why he doesn’t have a girlfriend.

And Thom’s paying a lot to see her. _A lot._

She’s gotta be worth it.

Karen makes sure to ask questions, so that he’ll do the talking. He doesn’t disappoint.

Thom’s oldest is applying to colleges soon, and he’s been having a real crisis about it, even though it’ll be a long time before he’s an empty nester on weekends. The one in the middle disagrees with him on everything, especially what foods constitute complete meals. His youngest is in sixth grade, and got As and Bs all year.

By the time Karen gets a run-down of his cat Rosie’s third surgery in six months, it’s time to board.

They’re taking an Amtrak, business class to Philadelphia.

Karen sits down by the window. As they leave the station, Thom’s got headphones around his neck, so she doesn’t feel bad about cracking open a book.

Her eyes just stare straight through the lines of text, though—Frank’s words have been echoing in her head for days.

_It’s not that I don’t want you, that I wouldn’t. But I can’t pay you for that. I’m not built for it._

_It’s not that I don’t want you, that I wouldn’t._

She stays on the same page for a few minutes, before slamming the book shut. It’s completely unprofessional for her to be carrying all this baggage onto the train with her, for her to be thinking about Frank while she’s with a different client.

“You alright?” Thom asks, pulling his headphones off the ear closest to her.

Paige smiles, and nods, leans in to kiss his cheek. “I’m excited.”

“Me too,” Thom says, and threads his fingers through hers. “Missed you.”

 

The hotel is a nice place downtown, with marble floors and a second adults-only pool. After they get into the room and freshen up a bit, Thom sits down on the couch in the suite.

They’ve learned from experience that Thom does better when he fucks first, and _then_ goes out to do things.

He really likes to be straddled.

Karen takes off her coat and shoes, and walks toward him, slow. “I’ve been looking forward to this,” she says, and smiles.

Thom grins back. “You have no idea, Paige.”

He sits forward, at the edge of the couch, and draws her closer with his hands, until she’s standing between his knees.

“Can I take this off you?” he asks, and tugs on her skirt.

Karen nods, and turns to him with the hip that has the zipper. “Please.”

The fabric falls to her ankles, and she holds onto his shoulders as she kicks it behind her.

He presses his face into her stomach after that, and slides his hands up to rest just under her ass. Karen strips out of her top, and Thom looks up.

“You’re even more beautiful than I remembered,” he says softly, and runs his finger under the hem of her panties. “These are nice, too.”

“Thank you,” she says, and runs her hand down his cheek. “You’re sweet.”

Thom presses a kiss to her fingers, and then leans back.

 

On the second day in Philly, when Thom fucks her doggy style, Karen closes her eyes, and imagines that it’s Frank.

He’d work her over from every angle, slow and steady, hands tight on her hips, maybe smack her ass a little, but only if she specifically requests it. She’d arch her back, push her ass up to give him the best view, listen to him groan her praises.

She wants to overwhelm him with how much he wants her, and then give herself to him. She still hasn’t seen his cock, but she just knows she would love it, that she would fucking worship it.

She would let him do anything he wanted.

If he could bring himself to fuck someone like her—but she pushes that thought away, focuses on chasing an orgasm, because Frank _wants_ to, he _would_ , he _said that_ —

Karen leans down on an elbow, so she can touch herself, and Thom changes the angle a little, and slides one hand from her waist around to her chest, rolls her nipple between his fingers.

“You feel so good, baby,” Thom says, and he moans when she clenches on his cock. “You gonna come for me?”

She wants to rile Frank up enough to talk dirty to her, to really run his mouth about everything he’d like to do to her, make him lose the bashful gentleman thing and just fuck her.

She rocks back into him as she taps at her clit, nodding, forces a smile onto her face so he’ll hear it in her voice. “I’m gonna come, Thom,” she says, panting. “Give it to me, I know you can.”

 

She’s quiet, after, at dinner, and Thom’s watching her. He’s been watching her ever since they got off the train the day before, in art galleries, and at Ben Franklin’s gravesite, and in their hotel room.

“Are you okay? Did—did I do something wrong?” he asks, and when she looks at his face, he looks worried, genuinely concerned.

“No, you’re fine, I’m sorry,” Paige says, and tosses her hair over her shoulder, reaches for his hand on the table. “I’m just a little distracted, I feel like I left the stove on at home or something.”

Thom’s body relaxes a little, and he squeezes her hand. He’s not satisfied, though. “Are you sure?” he asks.

Telling the truth would crush him—he’s more emotionally attached to her than he should be, and that’s probably her own fault. Paige lies to men for a living, but she didn’t used to have to lie much to Thom.

She liked him. Karen always bled in too much.

“I promise,” Paige says. “You’re perfect.”

 

Karen gets home late on Sunday, close to midnight. She takes a shower, scrubs all her crevices so she doesn’t smell like she’s fucked Thom six times in the last four days, and lays in bed for an hour.

She shouldn’t have taken a nap on the train.

It’s been eight days, and she’s still parsing Frank’s words. The self-hating, slut-shaming twelve-year-old girl in Karen’s head wants her to believe that she’s just a washed-up whore. That Frank would hate to be next in a line of hundreds of men that have been inside her in the last ten years.

But there had been no judgement in his face. No disgust.

Maybe it’s because she had never looked at him with the same, for all his killing, as if their crimes and their underground lives could ever be equated.

She has Frank’s address—he lives across Brooklyn from her, way closer than the studio. She could just show up at his place, make a dramatic speech, embarrass herself horribly. If she fucks it up too badly, he just won’t make another appointment with her.

He’ll just be gone from her life.

After two, Karen gets up, and opens her safe. She pulls out all the cash Frank’s ever given her—after eight cuddling sessions and the dinner party, it’s a grand total of eighty-five hundred.

None of what she had done to earn it had felt like work.

Karen gets dressed, grabs her purse, and hails a taxi.

 

There’s no name beside the buzzer for Frank’s apartment number, but she presses it anyway, a little worried that it could be a false address, like his false name.

After most of a minute, though, Frank’s voice crackles through the speaker. “ _Who is this?_ ”

Maybe she should have called.

She presses the intercom button. “It’s Karen.”

Almost immediately, and with a loud buzz, the front door unlocks. Karen heaves it open, and takes the stairs up two flights, her heart thumping in her chest, loud in her ears. Her mouth is dry. But if she doesn’t do this, she’ll never get the answer she wants, or the one she doesn’t.

She tries to pull it together before she knocks on the door, takes a few deep breaths.

Before she’s ready, though, Frank opens the door with no shirt on, with his gun out. “Hey,” he says, softly, and then steps forward, peers around the edge of the doorway.

There’s no one else in the hall. It’s after three in the morning.

Frank flips the safety back on, and steps aside. Karen walks in, past him, and waits for him to close the door.

“You alright?” he asks, behind her.

“I need to know what you meant,” she says, gripping the strap of her bag like it could hold her up. “When you said you weren’t built for it, that you couldn’t pay me for sex. I really want to understand.”

“Jesus, Karen,” Frank says. “That’s what this is about?”

She turns to him, and frowns.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he says, tucking his gun into the front of his pants. “I thought you were in trouble.”

Karen shakes her head.

Frank sighs, and nods toward the table in the kitchen. “Let’s, um, let’s sit down, then.”

“Okay.”

“Gimme a sec,” he says.

Karen sits down as Frank leaves the room. The apartment is sparse, like he hasn’t lived here too long—and like he hasn’t been spending big bucks on it the way he does with her. She sets her bag on the next chair, and after a moment, Frank returns, with a shirt on and without his gun.

He goes to a cabinet in the kitchen, first, and takes down two glasses. “Want some water?” Frank asks, and presses his glass into the dispenser on the fridge.

“Yes, please,” she says gratefully, even though he has to be stalling.

He joins her at the table with two glasses, and she takes a sip, and then another, smoothing out the dry ache in her throat.

He brings a hand up to scratch over his beard. “You’re sure you wanna hear this?”

Karen nods.

He sighs, and looks away, his finger twitching. “Listen, I—don’t take this the wrong way, but I uh—I really didn’t expect to like you so much.”

She just nods again, and waits for him to continue.

“I mean, I’m not one to judge what you do, or anything,” he says, glancing up at her. “But I guess I thought—from the beginning, being with you, it always felt so _good_ , it’s the best thing I’ve had in _so long_ , and I thought maybe if we never had sex, I wouldn’t have to fall in love with a woman, y’know, that I, I can’t have.”

Maybe she should ask him to repeat that.

“Pretty stupid, right?” he continues. “Sex doesn’t have anything to do with that. But I couldn’t bear the idea that you were only with me because—because I _paid_ you—or that anything you said or did with me was an _act_ —”

Karen reaches into her bag, and pulls out a thick envelope. “That’s why I brought this.”

He takes it, and looks inside, and then back up at her. “What’s this,” he says, one side of his mouth curling up like he knows _exactly_ what it is. 

“I don’t want it,” she says, and folds her arms on the tabletop. “Nothing I did with you was for the money, Frank.”

“Karen—”

“Ask me to stop.”

His brow furrows. “What?”

“I have four hundred thousand in the bank and I’m too close to one of my clients,” she says firmly. “Ask me to stop, Frank. I’ve had a good run. Give me a reason.”

“Are you serious? This—this is your career.”

Karen shrugs. “I’m a smart girl. I can get another one,” she says. “I think about you when I’m with other men. It’s bad for business.”

A grin spreads over his face. “Really?”

When she nods, a laugh bursts out of him, like he’s incredulous. “Wow,” he says. “I mean, I’ve been tryin’ to start my own life over. It’d be a lot more bearable with you there.”

“You think so?” she says softly, still fishing for the ask.

He nods, and leans forward, slides his hand over hers on the table. “You wanna do that? Close up shop, be with me?”

“Yeah, I do,” she says, and as she nods, she can feel her eyes burning with tears.

“Hey, stop that,” Frank says, rubbing his thumb over the back of her hand. “Shit, you’re gonna make me cry, too.”

Karen laughs, and wipes her eyes with her other hand. “Sorry.”

He’s _beaming_ , his eyes crinkling at the corners even as they leave her gaze.

She rises from her chair and shrugs out of her coat, and he turns as she steps up next to him, clearly not sure if he should get up. And then Karen sinks into his lap, and slides an arm around his shoulders.

Frank groans as he wraps his own arms around her, as he presses his face into her neck.

“God, Karen,” he says, trailing his hand down her back, lets it rest right above her ass. “I’m scared that I’m dreamin’.”

Karen curls a finger under his chin, and pulls back to look at him. He smiles as she leans in to kiss him, as she works around his wiry moustache to taste him.

“You’re not dreaming, Frank,” she says, against his lips—and then he’s leaning in for more, slipping her the tongue, just a little.

When he pulls away, Frank slides his hand down her thigh, and then cracks up. “You fuckin’ killed me with that shit you pulled on the couch, when I had the shiner.”

She smirks back. “I know I did.”

“You were tryin’ to provoke me, weren’t you.”

“Of course I was,” she says. “Thought you might need some encouragement.”

He grumbles, and presses his face into her neck again, kisses the skin under her jaw. “It’s too late for me to get you back for that right now, but I will.”

She digs her fingers into Frank’s hair and smiles. “I’ll hold you to that. Sorry I couldn’t wait until tomorrow.”

He looks up, drags a finger down her cheek. “I’m not. You’re gonna stay, right? Come to bed.”

She does.

 

Karen wakes up warm, in a bed that smells like Frank, in a t-shirt and sleep pants that are definitely his.

He’s not in bed, though—she can also smell coffee, and hear him puttering around in the kitchen. She sits up, and swings her legs over the side of the bed. It’s after ten, if Frank’s digital clock is to be believed.

Karen uses the bathroom, and swishes with some of Frank’s toothpaste. She walks out into the kitchen to find Frank at his laptop, some of his hair curling over his forehead, and a mug beside him.

“Hey,” he says. “You want some coffee? I don’t have a fancy Keurig or anything, but—”

Karen smiles and shakes her head. “Drip’s fine, Frank, thank you.”

He gets up from the table and pours her a cup, and she wraps an arm around his waist after he hands it to her.

“You were dead to the world when I woke up,” Frank says, an easy smile on his face. “Thought I might make you that breakfast, but I don’t actually have a lot of food.”

The coffee’s still too hot to drink, so Karen places it down on the counter, and pulls Frank in for a kiss.

“Pick me up,” she says, softly, against his lips—and Frank bends with his knees, wraps his arms around her thighs.

Karen shrieks a little when he lifts her, and her arms clutch at his shoulders. Once her legs are wrapped around him, she presses kisses over his face. He slots his mouth over hers, too, sucks her lower lip into his mouth, and then he grunts a little, and tips her ass onto the island countertop.

He drips kisses down her neck, Karen’s legs keeping him flush against her, and he hums into her skin.

“I loved waking up next to you,” he says. “Fuck, there’s so much I wanna do with you.”

“Tell me about it,” Karen says, and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Let me drink my coffee first, though.”

Frank chuckles as he pulls back, and he hands Karen her mug. Breaking the hold of her legs, Frank steps away, to the other end of the kitchen, and goes through a stack of papers.

“In the interest of transparency—” he starts, and walks back to her with an envelope, and hands it to her. “I went to the clinic before I even met with you. Just—y’know, I don’t like not knowing answers, had ‘em send me two copies.”

The label’s discreet, but she’s seen enough of them to know it’s his test results.

“Open it.”

Karen slides her fingertip under the seal and tears it open. She pulls out the contents, and unfolds them.

He’s negative, for everything from HIV to syphilis.

“Well look at you, clean as a whistle,” Karen says with a smile. “I won’t be offended if you want to see mine. I’ve probably seen more dicks than you saw in the Marines.”

Frank shrugs. “I trust you. You get tested all the time, right? You wouldn’t do this if you could give me somethin’.”

Karen wants to make a face at him, but Frank doesn’t seem the type to worry too much about damage to his person.

“Did you have plans today?” Karen asks, and puts the papers down to lift her coffee to her lips.

He shakes his head. “I’ve got group later, but that’s all. What about you? Did you have— _clients_ , or—”

“No, I take Mondays and Tuesdays off.”

“That’s right,” Frank says. “You told me that.”

She reaches out, pulls him closer. “I’ll have to make some cancellations, though. Better do that sooner rather than later, I think.”

“They might not take it well,” he says, and trails a finger down her thigh. “Bet you got guys falling in love with you left and right.”

Karen smirks. “Maybe so. Most of them never say it, though. And most of them aren’t my type at all.”

“Yeah, and what’s your type?”

She considers him, the smirk still on her lips. “Oh, I don’t know. Ex-military hipsters who’ll spend eight hundred dollars a week for cuddling, but not bother to furnish their apartments.”

“That’s awfully specific.”

Karen shrugs her shoulders. “I know what I like.”

Frank chuckles, tucking some of her hair behind her ear. “You hungry?”

Karen winces. “I think maybe I should go settle all of this, and then come back. It’ll nag at me if I don’t.”

“Uh, can I—I’ll go shopping, can I make you dinner later?”

She smiles wide, and kisses him.

 

Karen has a lot to do—she has an entire operation to shut down, and a studio to move out of, although she supposes it’ll be much simpler a dismantling than most small businesses.

Jessica’s going to laugh at her when she hears about this, and then she’ll realize she’s being fired.

“So, don’t laugh,” Karen starts.

Jessica snorts through the phone. “This oughta be good.”

Karen sighs. “Sorry for the short notice, but I’m taking my website and ads down after we hang up. I’m retiring.”

“Well, shit,” Jessica says, and Karen can just picture her, feet up on the desk, smug as hell. “You said I’m supposed to laugh, so who’s in love with you? Is it Frank? It is, isn’t it.”

Karen closes her eyes, and waits a few beats before she says, “Yes, it is.”

“And you’re calling to fire me,” Jessica says. “Unless you have some other reason.”

“I need to make a lot of cancellations, and move out of the studio, and burn the mattress.”

“Yeah, so?”

Karen scoffs. “ _So_ , wanna help me, Miss Muscles, and earn your generous severance package?”

Jessica groans, but Karen can hear the lilt of a smile in her voice when she says, “Fine. But only because I’m glad you’re finally turning the red light off.”

 

Karen never gets paid this far in advance, so cancellations are as easy as a few calls, and a mass email to her repeat clients. She keeps the email vague enough to not be evidence that she’s been selling ass, but clear that she’ll be closing her business and is dumping her work cell.

She gets a sad emoji and a lot of question marks back right away from Troy, and about twenty minutes later, gym-rat Jeremy texts her with, **_i can have my boys ready for action if you need someone fucked up._**

Thom reaches out, an hour after that. **_Are you okay? What happened?_**

She responds to them all with the same thing: **_I’m fine, don’t worry._**

That won’t be enough for Thom, but Karen turns the phone off anyway.

It doesn’t end as dramatically as burning the mattress. Jessica meets her at the studio in the afternoon, and busts the bedframe into a few more manageable pieces. She carries them down to the dumpster, Karen following behind with a rather large box of sex toys, lube, condoms, and wedges. All of her towels get thrown out too—they’ve seen a lot of cum.

Jessica takes down the security camera and the screen she installed, and crushes Karen’s work phone in her fist.

They strap down the couch and mattress in the back of a pickup, driven by a man that Jessica says is her neighbor (“You’re paying him, too,” she adds), and then he and Jessica leave to go to the dump.

It was expensive furniture, but the couch and bed have both been ridden too hard and put away too wet for Karen to sell or donate them in good conscience.

She calls Housing Works to schedule a pick-up for the coffee table, dresser, side tables, and TV—they’ve been relatively unscathed. Her makeup and a few clothes get packed into a duffel bag, and then Karen goes downstairs to the front office.

Breaking the lease is the most tedious part. Her landlady, Harper, had always raised an eyebrow at Karen’s patterns of absence. It’s a smaller, multi-use building, with some businesses and only a few apartment units, but anyone who really poked around the place would know that Karen doesn’t live there.

She probably could have called the cops. Probably would have, if Karen wasn’t white and blonde, and the men who paid her weren’t largely very wealthy professionals.

The studio has to be completely vacated by Wednesday, so she’ll make the place spotless tomorrow. The security lock she’d had installed will need to come off too—maybe she can get Frank to help her with that. Karen could probably figure out how to do it herself, but she can tell that he’d like to feel useful.

“What’s the deal, ya gettin’ married or somethin’?” Harper asks, in a heavy New York accent, as she hands over the forms for Karen to fill out.

Karen smiles as she reads over the fine print. “Something like that.”

 

When she gets back to Frank’s, freshly showered, it’s almost seven.

He opens the door, and fuck, he’s shaved his face.

Karen gasps, and strokes his smooth cheeks in the doorway. “You look so handsome.”

Frank grins into her kiss. “Knew you’d like it.”

“It’s easier to kiss you now.”

He nods, and closes the door.

“What’re you gonna feed me?” Karen asks. “I’m ravenous, actually, I was clearing out the studio all day.”

“Really, all that furniture?” Frank says, as they walk into the kitchen. “Did you hire someone? You could have asked me to help.”

She shakes her head. “I wanted to do it myself. It was cathartic, y’know. And I know a girl who’s really strong.”

Frank makes an impressed face. “So, what—you’re done, just like that?”

She shrugs. “Pretty much. I’ve just gotta go over it with a vacuum.”

“Shit. You want a drink?”

“ _Yes_.”

Frank turns to the fridge, and sighs as he looks inside. “Uh, I guess as far as alcohol goes, I’ve just got beer.”

“I like beer,” Karen says, and he pulls out two, pops the tops off. She sidles up to him, hooks her finger in his belt loop as he hands her a bottle. “What should we drink to?” she asks.

Frank hums, sliding his hand up her arm. “I don’t know if I could boil it down.”

“How about,” she starts, and holds her bottle up. “Non-transactional sex, good food, and staying outta trouble.”

Frank smirks, and says, “Yeah, let’s go with that.” He clinks his bottle with hers, and takes a long pull.

Frank’s roasting a chicken—he opens the oven to show her, and there’s rice cooking on the stove, and raw vegetables set aside, ready to go into a pan.

There’s twenty-one minutes left on the oven timer.

“I know you’re cooking and everything,” Karen says, as she puts her bottle down and hops back up onto the counter. “But you know what I wanna do right now?”

“Tell me,” Frank says, and sets his beer down too, so he can slide his hands up her thighs.

“This is just a really good height, and I wanna watch you suck on my tits.”

Frank takes it like an order—he helps pull her top over her head, watches her reach back for the clasp of her bra. It falls away, to the floor, and Frank grins, and kisses her, before ducking down to get his mouth on her chest.

She digs her fingers into his hair as Frank cups her breasts in his hands, as he sweeps his tongue over one nipple and seals his lips around it. His eyes are closed, when she focuses on his face. His cheeks hollow out as he sucks at her, tugs with his teeth a little before laving over her peak like an apology.

Frank groans as he releases her, and looks up. “I’ve wanted to see you naked for so long,” he says, and drags his teeth over her skin.

Before he can switch to her other breast, Karen smiles, and reaches for the button on her pants. “You want to?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.”

He helps her tug them down, and then Karen hisses. “Ah, the counter’s cold,” she says, and Frank practically dives for a drawer, and pulls out a clean towel.

She lifts her hips so he can spread it out, and then sits back down, kisses him again.

Frank tugs off her panties, too, and as he takes her other nipple into his mouth, he slides his thumb over her clit, makes slow circles around it.

“Yes, Frank,” Karen breathes, tugging on his hair—it’s long enough to get real purchase on.

“God, you’re wet,” Frank says, and smiles, kisses the swell of her breast. “Fuck, can I eat you out before I serve you dinner?”

She grins back, and nods. It might be the best sentence she’s ever heard.

Frank pulls away, and her eyes follow him as he crosses the kitchen, and comes back with a chair. Placing it in front of her, he sits down, and slides his hands under her knees, slings them over his shoulders.

“Jesus, Frank, you’re really setting the bar here,” she says, leaning back on her elbows as he kisses down the inside of her thigh.

He just smiles up at her, and spreads her pussy with his tongue.

“Fifteen more minutes on the timer,” Karen says, and digs one hand into his hair again. “Think you can beat it?” Karen holds her fist steady as he nods, so it’ll tug a little.

“I know I can,” Frank says, his voice a low rumble, and goes right for her clit.

She doesn’t doubt it. It’s a beautiful sight—Karen watches him, working her over with his mouth, eyes closed. At first, he looks focused, searching, but that falls away quick, into an expression of bliss.

She lies back on the stone countertop after a bit, grips the edge tight. It’s cold on her bare arms, but everything else—she’s overheated, and with the oven on, the room’s warm anyway.

Frank slides a finger inside her, and then another, thrusts and curls them in time with his tongue, until she’s gasping. He makes her come with four minutes to spare, and presses kisses around her clit before getting up.

She lays there while Frank cleans her up, and wipes his face, and washes his hands.

When she’s ready, Frank helps her down from the counter, and it’s a good thing, because her knees start shaking as soon as she gets her footing. Karen sits in the chair while Frank turns off the heat under the rice, and turns it on under a frying pan. She leans down to pick up her panties, and her eyes follow the outline of his erection through his jeans, even as he throws the vegetables in and stirs them up.

He gets the chicken out of the oven when the timer goes off, sticks a thermometer in the breast meat, and then transfers the chicken to a cutting board.

Frank’s not flagging. Not enough to notice, anyway.

“Are you _always_ this good at delayed gratification?” Karen asks, as she pulls her top back on. “That’s a queen you might not want on the board too early, Frank. Might get taken advantage of.”

Frank looks up, and smiles, holding a knife poised to carve the meat. “I’ve got a high pain tolerance.”

Karen leaves the pants and bra on the floor.

Dinner’s good—Frank’s accomplished in the kitchen, and she eats slowly, with her hand on his thigh. It’s been a long, long time since a man has cooked for her. He doesn’t complain, and doesn’t rush her.

The plates don’t even make it into the dishwasher before Karen’s grabbing a condom from her bag and shoving Frank toward the bedroom, though.

Their kisses get messier as they try to multitask, like they’re coloring outside the lines, and then he’s sitting at the edge of the bed, his belt’s undone, his fly’s open, and her hand is around him.

Her panties have dropped to the floor.

He’s thick. She can’t wait to have him inside her.

“How many times have you thought about this?” Karen asks.

“I don’t think a day’s gone by since I met you, that it hasn’t crossed my mind,” he says, head cocked to the side, as he kicks his pants all the way off.

“Is that so,” Karen says with a smile, and kisses him before she follows him onto the middle of the bed, and straddles his waist, helps him tug his shirt over his head.

It’s probably not the time to say she masturbated to thoughts of him while being fucked by someone else. She’ll have to float that when there’s not such a mood to kill. She’s never even seen him naked—not even last night, she’d changed in the bathroom.

Frank groans, and pushes her shirt up around her ribcage, slides one hand inside to palm at her breast.

Karen gets rid of her top, and then cards her hands into his hair, a little rougher than she usually does, and Frank closes his eyes, moans a little.

“Frank,” she says softly, “Did you think about me while you laid in this bed?”

He looks up at her, and smiles. “Yeah.”

“What did I do to you?” she asks. He’s blushing. “Did I ride the hell out of you?”

Frank nods, a little hazy. “Yes, Karen.”

“Did you come inside me?”

“Y-yes, Karen.”

She reaches behind her back, fists Frank’s cock, and lifts up on her knees, repositions herself. When Karen comes back down, it’s to rub herself on him, to slide him through her slick folds. She’s still so swollen for him.

Frank’s biting his lip—he whimpers a little, as she brings a hand down to adjust him, to hold him against her. She grinds on the base of his cock just right, and she smiles down at him as she drags herself back up to the head.

“I’ve wanted you inside me so bad, Frank,” she says, panting, and reaches for the condom.

Karen tears it open and rolls it on, probably a bit too expertly, and holds eye contact with Frank as she lines up. The stretch is so good, and she takes every inch, sinks down to the base of him. His mouth falls open when she swivels her hips, and when she raises them for the first time to slide back down.

“Jesus fuck,” he says, his voice cracking a little, his strong hands coming up to grip her.

After the second pass, Frank gets his feet under him, and starts meeting her movements with the snap of his hips, his hands pulling her back down.  

Karen rides him hard, and they rock the cheap bedframe against the wall. It’s loud and unsteady, and for a moment she mourns having destroyed her old one, that hardly ever budged.

But she could never have fucked him like this in that bed, with all the ghosts in it.

She could never have looked down at him, sitting on his cock like a throne, and seen a future. She could never have let herself babble the truth at him, about how much she wants him. She could never think about maybe forgoing the condom next time, and letting Frank watch his own spunk spill from her only to push it back in. Maybe he’d lick it up himself.

Karen grins, and pulls her hair over one shoulder, and leans down to kiss him. The new angle’s incredible, and Frank wraps his arms around her, trails his mouth down her neck, his thrusts getting longer, deeper.

He’s getting close, she can tell. That didn’t take long, but she didn’t expect it to. She twists her fingers into his hair, and uses him for leverage.

Frank comes with her name on his lips like a mantra.

They clean up eventually.

 

Karen wakes up in a warm bed, with a shirtless Frank beside her. He’s on his stomach, his face turned away, and the blankets are pushed down enough that she can see a long scar on his shoulder blade, straight across, like it was surgical.

There’s a jagged one above his elbow, too. She hasn’t had a chance to catalogue them all yet, kiss them all better.

After a minute or so, Frank turns over, and opens his eyes, catches her looking.

“Hey,” he says, soft, and smiles.

She edges into his space until he wraps an arm around her and pulls her in, eliminating any room between them. Frank slides a leg between hers under the covers, presses his face into her neck, and closes his eyes again.

“Five more minutes,” Frank says, even though she can feel him, hard against her thigh.

His weight feels good.

She trails her fingers over his skin, and closes her eyes too, but she gets restless quick, and kisses the patches of his skin that she can reach.

Frank hums in return, mouths at her jaw, and rubs himself against her. “Been a while since I had morning wood,” he says, voice still rough with sleep. He slides a hand over her hip to squeeze at her ass, until she can’t help but tug her panties down, and let him slide two fingers inside her.

“What can I do, Karen?” he asks, as he strokes her. “What would you like?”

She smiles, and kisses him. “It’s not so much what you can do.”

Frank looks confused, but he goes when she pushes him onto his back, and spreads his legs when she crawls between them, and scoots up the bed when she tells him to.

Karen gets down on her stomach, and rests on an elbow, bent up next to his hip, and wraps her hand around him.

“Well, good morning to you too,” Frank says, with half a grin.

Karen twists her wrist, and drags her tongue over the base of his cock, smiling up at him. “Can you hold my hair out of the way, please?”

Frank brings his hands down immediately, and gathers her long hair to one side, threads it around his fingers.

She takes the head into her mouth then, and just holds him there, with her eyes closed. Listens to him moan as she sucks on it, loving the feel of him beneath her, inside her again.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, when she takes him deeper, until her lips hit the fist she has around him.

One of his hands slides around to the back of her head when she starts bobbing there, working her tongue on him, taking him farther every time. He’s hot and smooth in her mouth, and any movement from his hips is miniscule.

She could do this all day.

The hand holding her hair tightens into a fist, but doesn’t pull. “Jesus Christ, Karen—you are—”

Karen pulls off to stroke him with her hand. “What am I?” she asks, looking up through her lashes at him.

“Amazing,” he says, on an exhale. “So fucking good.”

She smiles, and slides her tongue out to tease him with again, and then ducks her head to take him down, sucks at him hard. He’s groaning now, and she’s so glad that he’s vocal—an orgasm alone won’t tell her what he likes along the way.

By the time the slurping is too loud in her ears, Frank starts trying to warn her that he’s close. As if she would pull off of him after dreaming about this for so long.

Frank’s breath shudders when he comes down her throat, and she milks it from him, drawing out every last bit of him until he’s oversensitive.

When she releases him and looks up, Frank’s arms are limp at his sides, and his head’s tipped back.

Karen cleans him up a little with her tongue, and then moves to her knees, clearing her throat. “Don’t fall asleep again, I need you to be manly and help me with something today.”

Frank smiles at her, still out of it, breathing hard, and nods. “Yeah, you bet. Whatever you need.”

He makes breakfast, after.

 

Frank grabs his toolkit, and he and Karen head to the studio just before noon. The pick-up crew is on time, and they end up taking everything she had hoped, including the TV. After they’re gone, and the place is truly empty, Karen runs the vacuum over every square inch of the place, and wipes down all the surfaces, checks all the drawers and cupboards for stowaways.

She had always kept more cleaning supplies at the studio than at her own apartment.

Frank uninstalls the security lock she had added to the door, and after he’s done replacing it with the original, he moves to the fridge without being asked, and cleans it out into a trash bag, and wipes down the shelves.

While she’s scrubbing the bathroom, Frank fills a few holes in the walls, too.

When everything’s done, Karen looks around, and grins at him, does a twirl in all the free space until he laughs, and wraps his arms around her, pulls her in for a kiss.

“Thank you,” she says, against his mouth, and it’s not just for the manual labor.

Frank smiles, and nods. “Time to go?”

“Yeah.”

Karen drops off her keys at the front office, and they go out to the street. Frank opens the trunk, and while he’s putting away his tools and her cleaning supplies, a car door shuts. She turns to look, and Thom’s locking his car, and coming up the sidewalk, kind of tentative.

He must have been waiting for her, and that should probably scare her—it would if it was someone else. It would have been smarter to announce her retirement _after_ moving out. But Karen puts a hand up to wave.

Thom stops about ten feet from her. “Sorry to just—but I was worried, and when you didn’t text me back—”

She smiles, and steps forward, shakes her head. “I’m okay, Thom. It’s just time for a change.”

He looks down. “Is this why you were weird all weekend?”

Frank closes the hatch, and steps onto the sidewalk. She looks over at him, hoping he won’t do any male posturing, but Frank just leans against the side of the truck. Available to step in if she’s uncomfortable, but letting her handle it.

When she turns back, Thom’s eyeing him a bit warily, like he knows Frank’s listening, watching them.

“Hey, look at me,” Karen says, and takes Thom’s face in her hands. “I’ve known you for a long time, haven’t I? Would you say I’m an expert?”

Thom nods. “Yeah.”

“Then believe me when I say you are _wonderful_. You don’t need me. It is okay for you to make time for yourself, and for a girlfriend if you really want one. And you deserve it. You won’t betray your kids by having a life. I promise.”

Thom chuckles, and leans into her touch. “Everything always sounds so simple when you say it.”

“That’s because it usually is, Thom. C’mere,” she says, and brings him in for a hug.

He sighs into her hair as he squeezes her, and then pulls back. It’s probably the shortest hug he’s ever given her. “I know it’s none of my business,” he says, looking down, “but did you—are you in love with someone?”

Frank’s head snaps up, in her periphery.

“Yeah, I am,” Karen says, with a nod.

Thom smiles, if a bit tight-lipped and shaky. “That’s great. I’m uh, I’m happy for you, Paige. And I mean, I’m sure that’s, y’know, the best thing for you. Getting out.”

“Thanks, Thom. I think so too.”

He sniffs, and shoves his hands in the pockets of his coat. “So, what are you gonna do now?”

“I don’t know,” Karen says. She glances over at Frank, who’s still there, leaning like James Dean minus the cigarette, waiting for her. “Maybe I’ll go back to school, become a therapist or something.”

Thom smiles. “You’d make a great one.”

She feels a grin spread over her face, one that she didn’t mean to let out in front of him. She takes a deep breath, and holds her hand out.

“My name’s Karen.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com), as always. This fic is rebloggable [here](http://glycerineclown.tumblr.com/tagged/escortkaren), if you're so inclined! ♥


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